Victor goes to Detroit and O’s fans feel spurned yet again

I certainly understand the angst and depression that is prevailing among some O’s fans tonight with the news that free agent Victor Martinez is going to sign with Detroit.

Those fans feel the O’s will never get anyone good through free agency and that the O’s will always come up short here.

The reason they feel like that is obvious - that is the way it always seems to go.

I don’t subscribe, however, to any theory that the club came up with a figure of 48 million they knew they could offer to look good but not actually sign the player.

I can’t imagine anyone with the club feeling good about that or congratulating themselves that they came close to signing a key free agent.

They need to stop coming close and actually get someone good. The time for that was well, years ago, but it didn’t happen then but needs to happen now or sometime this offseason.

No one knows now and we never may know for sure, what the order of events was here and if the O’s had a chance to sweeten their reported offer of four years for 48 million. We also may never know if Martinez ever had some or any interest at all in signing here.

His OPS figures of .861 in 2009 and .844 last year would have fit in nicely here. His bat was and is needed. I don’t completely believe that he was against playing first base. If that was a deal breaker, why did the O’s make him an offer?

Maybe the club that was most spurned here was the White Sox if the report that they offered three years at 48 million is correct. Is there something you can buy with 50 million that 48 won’t get you?

At those prices, did he really need a fourth year on his contract?

We all know the O’s are going to have overpay for a key free agent. Some might say they did just that in this case. It’s reaching the point that they may have to go beyond overpaying to offering a crazy contract to get something done.

They just are not going to be able to get anyone while maintaining any constraint or fiscal sanity.

So Victor’s not coming here.

The fans are ticked off and tired of this feeling. They’ve been here before.

What will it take to win one of these sweepstakes and when will it happen?